Recumbent Bike - Land Record For Top Speed In A Human-Powered Vehicle

You know bike culture is growing gradually even if slowly when you begin to see more and more recumbent bicycles on the streets of a place like New York, formerly one of the most notoriously bicycle-unfriendly cities around and still host to irritable drivers and hostile policemen.

It has always been recognized that a reclined rider position, with the frame geometries unique to that situation, make for better aerodynamics and quicker speeds so fast, in fact , the land record for speed in a human-powered vehicle is held by a recumbent bicycle.

So fast, actually that early on bicycle races banned recumbent thanks to the design's inherent advantages. After winning a few races, it became quite clear that, all else being kind of equal, a recumbent rider was sure to triumph each time. And so the recumbent quickly faded from preferred view and has been relegated to generally home-built designs.

But cycling is reasonably the rage in Europe, particularly the more socially progressive countries like Germany and the Netherlands. In Germany, there is even a city which voted to ban all vehicle traffic to the fringes of the city, while in the Netherlands there are plenty of more bicycles than autos on the road on any specific day! And so it is that in these nations the recumbent bicycle has found fairly widespread adoption, and the trend seems to be catching on even in a rough place like New York.

Recumbents, or bents for short, can be found in one or two different designs, from low-riders that look almost as if the individual is laying down supine to choppers that almost resemble classic motorcycle designs. In fact , 'bents' are a heap more sundry than regular bicycles ( AKA uprights ) are, which is 1 explanation why they aren't yet as widely supported by bike shops in the United States.